Days 10: scattered projects

I think it's time to talk a little bit about the point of this blog.  What am I doing, and why? Well, the idea initially was to use the 100-day project framework to get me back into writing and drawing. I planned to alternate days between visual and written sketches, starting with  the 2-months-worth of prompts I acquired 2 years ago. The prompts came to me at different times and for different reasons, but I thought,  the end of the 100 days, I'll have the habit of practising these arts.

That was the idea.

The 30 visual prompts I had were for photographs, actually. A photographer that I follow on Blipfoto.com posted them. She and a geographically-distant friend inspired each other, using the same prompts for a month. I didn't use her prompts then. Instead I collaborated with A and B: each evening one of us would text a prompt (circle, sky, tree, red, rain....you get the idea). We took it in turns. By the end of the next day, we'd share a sketch based on the prompt. B, being distracted by more obligations, didn't always have a sketch to share, but sometimes she and her grandson both worked on the prompt, and then we got two from her. It was delightful to see the different places the same prompt would take us. The purpose was simple, to encourage each other, to create a habit of drawing.

This was not the first time I’d tried to create this habit. Back when I lived in Portland, I tried to do lessons from Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. I gave up after the lesson in drawing negative space. I just didn’t get it.

I continued to draw, intermittently, and then I tried a 100-day project of daily sketches. I recently found the sketchbook that I used for that project. I apparently did a lot of traveling then, as my sketches were set in Tijeras, Cerrillos, Taos, Portland, and Ormond Beach. I'm not sure what year it was, but I suspect 2022. The sketches are labeled Day 1, Day 2, etc I didn't start dating them until Day 15, and then it was only month and day. I finished on June 1 with the sketch of a wine glass, but I continued sketching for a few more days.  Then either I switched over to another sketchbook, or I began doing other arts and crafts, only returning to the sketchbook occasionally. 

I didn't really establish a habit. I did the project, never got much better, but did discover that I do like sketching. I like the feel of pen in hand. Contour or gesture drawing is my favorite. It's quick, and it's simple. I don't look at my drawing. I don't try to get proportions and perspective or correct as I go. I look at the subject and my hand tries to draw what my eyes see. It's stream of consciousness made visible. It's meditative. It's a chance to stop and look at things in a more visceral way than my daily photography habit allows.

So, that’s the background for the visual sketching part of the 100-day project. I’m trying again, using the prompts from the Blipfoto person. But I only have 30 prompts, and I also want to do verbal sketches, that being another failed habit.

I tried to resume writing in the Fall of 2023.  NaNoWriMo was approaching. I had participated years ago, and I stalled after the month was up. When I came back to my half-finished sci-fi novel, I didn't recognize it. I hadn't had an outline or a plan, I just wrote. There were two storylines. One was based on my dad's WWII diary. He was radioman on a troop carrier in the Pacific. He mentions the Sullivan brothers and Ernie Pyle, and Okinawa, and Tokyo Rose, but the entries are laconic in the extreme. I was trying to flesh them out through the medium of a time-traveling invisible observer. However, I didn't have the energy to research the history or the science. Of course, I could have added the Alternate Universe concept....

So, I turned to my writerly friend H. I said, I want to finish my NaNoWriMo novel, but I am out of ideas for things to write.  She sent me thirty prompts.  "My go-to for writing prompts is poetry indexes by first line." A friend of hers used the Wordle of the day. I was all set...but I did nothing.

That was one writing project in limbo. And there were others. Years ago I had begun an account of the year with Esther, using photographs and haiku. The collection of family stories was begging to be written. But I lacked something. I lacked several somethings. Energy was one thing, focus another.  But the real lack was the basic habit of writing. I needed to sit down every day and write. I needed to observe. I needed to make lists. I needed to go beyond the stream of consciousness brain drain of the morning pages and write about something, anything, in a coherent manner.

That, as I said, was 2 years ago. A few weeks ago, another Blipper said she was doing the 100-Day project with a difference. She has 100 blank postcards, and she'll fill them with paintings until they are gone. And that galvanized me. I can't commit to 100 consecutive days; there are trips and other projects coming up. But I can get going on these prompts.

And it’s working, I think. In the past, I've had something to say. I was traveling and petsitting. I was thinking about my life, dealing with transitions. I was writing for myself, I was writing for the friends and family who kept asking where I was and what I was doing.  Then, I lost interest even in that sort of writing,  But since starting this project, the interest has returned.

So, Days 1-5 I both wrote and drew, using the prompts.  No, I'm not going to post the drawings. They'll stay in the little sketchbook and maybe I'll look at them in another 3 years. Days 6 and 7 I drew. Days 8 and 9 I wrote in my other blog. I had something to say, and as long as that's the case, I don't need the prompts.

Now I’m up to Day 10. This blog will be where I practice the writing habit using prompts. I hope. And I'll post them as an incentive to myself. It's like dieting or quitting smoking. I need the accountability of telling someone that I'm doing this, and then actually doing it and putting it out there, good, bad, indifferent. I don’t need to post anything, of course. But I’ve told people I’m doing it, so, just in case they are interested, I’ll post my words.